Zankou Chicken Murders - Out of Beirut | 1

Business Wars

Audible

History, David Brown, Business, Management

4.6 • 13.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2018

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s January 14th, 2003, and 56-year-old Mardiros Iskenderian, the founder of the family-owned chain of rotisserie restaurants Zankou Chicken, is leaving the house for the first time in months.

Twenty years ago, the Iskenderians transplanted their business from war-torn Beirut to sunny Los Angeles, where it blossomed into a California institution. But today, Mardiros is battling cancer—and losing. He kisses his wife Rita and heads for the door. It’ll be the last time she’ll see him alive.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, prime members. You can listen to business wars. Add free on Amazon music. Download the app today
0:12.8	January 14th, 2003 a white stucco mansion high in the hills above Glendale, California. L.A.'s Armenian enclave
0:22.7	56-year-old Margarose Iskenderian closes his bedroom door. He inches down the stairs,
0:29.4	step by painful step. He is the founder of the family-owned chain of rotisserie restaurants
0:35.6	Zon Kuchikin, an L.A. institution. He's wearing a white silk suit that hasn't fit him for decades.
0:43.3	Several years battling cancer have whittled him down from a burly middle-aged restaurant
0:47.8	mogul to a frail, though dapper, invalid. He walks into the kitchen where his wife Rita sits at the
0:54.8	table sipping a cup of mulberry tea. Rita fell in love with Margarose in Lebanon when she was just
1:01.5	12. Seeing him now, she can't believe how handsome he looks for a man so sick, so near death.
1:10.3	Ah, Margarose, you look like a movie star. But where do you think you're going in that fancy suit?
1:16.4	You're too weak. You haven't been out of that house on your own in months. Margarose
1:22.4	fiddles with the cuffs of his stiffly-starched dress shirt. He looks anywhere but into his wife's eyes.
1:28.9	He knows she can usually see right through him. Don't worry about me, I feel so much better today.
1:35.7	I'm going to meet Garo at the restaurant. I haven't seen him in, well, forever.
1:42.2	Rita doesn't believe him. Margarose hasn't met up with any friends since his last round of
1:47.5	treatments began. He doesn't want them to see him like this. But even in his weakened state,
1:54.2	her husband is not a man she can easily control. Margarose kisses the top of her head, picks up the
2:01.2	keys to the Mercedes from the hook by the door and hobbles past the quipond in front of the house
2:06.5	to the driveway. This is the last time his wife will ever see him alive. By the end of this day,
2:16.0	the business the family started 40 years ago in Beirut, Lebanon, reestablished from scratch in
2:21.3	Los Angeles and made into a California legend will be shattered, perhaps beyond repair.
2:29.5	The restaurant entrepreneur respected philanthropist and family man is on a bloody mission.
	...

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